If you're wrong about what most people think, and you realize that most people actually share your values,

what would that change about the way you treat them, how you engage in conversation?

If you thought, actually, I think we largely agree, and we're going to debate some of the nuance of the how,

I think we end up being more civil, more respectful.

Welcome to The Lost Debate. This is a special episode because we've been talking over the

course of the past year about two data sets from this organization called Populus. And one of these data sets was

around collective illusions. You might remember this. Last year, we talked about how people's

public and private preferences on major issues are sometimes very different. And we had a whole

conversation about why that may be the case. And then recently on a few episodes, we've been talking about this data around what Americans want out of the education system.

And both of these sets of data come from Populus.

And the person who is the mastermind behind Populous is this guy named Todd Rose, who I had the chance to meet in New York.

A few months ago

when he was talking about the book around collective illusions. And I just kept seeing his

ideas everywhere. I saw him. I was on the set of Bill Maher when Ricky was on Bill Maher,

and Bill Maher was talking about collective illusions. And I'm like, this stuff is everywhere.

And so I wanted to have Todd on the podcast because we've been talking about his data

and his work so much. I figured let's just have an extended conversation, both about the

collective illusions data and about the data around parents and Americans and what they want

out of the education system. And so that's what we're doing today. Todd Rose,

welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited for the conversation.

Well, Todd, let's start with the collective illusions, okay? I am so fascinated by this data.

I think the starting point is, what is a collective illusion? Yeah, sure. So a collective illusion

...